Pinball
by aMUSEment345
Summary: One shot, post-ep for 15X02, 'Awakenings'. Reid ponders the events of the past two days.


**A.N. Post-ep 15X02, _Awakenings_**

* * *

**Pinball**

He trudged up the stairs of his apartment building, thankful that he only had to reach the second floor. Some days were longer than others, the stress of them measured by the degree of fatigue falling into every step. At the moment, Reid felt as though some lives seemed longer than others, too.

_I'm not just exhausted. I feel like a pinball. _

His mind rewound the events of the past two days, and the past six months, and the past three years, and then the past fifteen, and all of it jumbled together into a cacophony of memory and emotion. Even just the past twenty-four hours alone had left him feeling like he'd been batted from high, to low, and back and forth at random, only to become completely drained of energy as he fell to the bottom.

The near loss of JJ, the 'finding' of his mother, the fear, the regret, the hope, the joy, and the knowledge that all of it was ephemeral. The memories that had refused to stop running as a loop in his mind for the past six months. The wondering, the dreaming, the dreading, the denying. All of it had conspired to leave him in a quandary of existential crisis. His only chance of living through it without completely melting down was to dissect it, piece by piece. His mind chose to start with the beginning of the most recent crisis, the moment outside the garage.

_Why didn't I call her before that? Why was I just standing there, watching them drive off in that van? Why didn't I realize what it meant? _

Once the right synapse had finally fired, it had been followed by a cascade of others, and he'd known, even as he'd keyed his radio, that she wouldn't answer. He hadn't even given her a full second to respond, before he'd gone running in her direction, so certain had he been. And then he'd been grateful that one of the ruling forces of physics was momentum, because it was the only thing that kept him running in her direction, when the sight of her lying on the floor of that garage wanted to stop him in his tracks.

"It's okay," he'd said, even as his eyes had tried to calculate, by surface area, the volume of blood she'd already lost. Nothing in what he'd been looking at was consistent with being okay.

_Another lie. Is that all the two of us do, is tell lies to one another?_

But it had been all he had to offer, for the seemingly interminable time it had taken the ambulance to arrive. He'd continued to tell her that it was okay, that everything would be okay, just as he had six months prior. He hadn't really meant it then, either.

He'd ordered her to keep breathing, as though he had the power to keep her alive. He'd ordered his own fingers to stop shaking as they'd made their ineffectual effort to cover the bullet hole in her side. He'd had to be peeled away from her by Rossi once the EMTs had arrived, and he'd had to reach deep to exude enough of an illusion of calm to persuade Rossi to let him accompany her to the hospital.

The image of her lying so still on the gurney, the sound of her heartbeat deadening to a siren call, the voices confirming the danger….and he'd felt like his own heart had stopped for the same duration as hers.

He hadn't been able to bear watching the violence of the paddles throwing her body into the air. His eyes had remained open, but they'd become unseeing, focused on an image that was present only in his mind. An image of her, looking at him, six months ago, promising him 'truth', and then being unable to give it to him.

_I didn't wait for her response then. Maybe I was afraid of what it might be. _

But he had known, even if he hadn't given her the time to say it. He'd cut her off, with 'It's okay, everything's okay'.

_I don't know if she believed me that time, either._

If she had in the moment, she had to have figured it out afterward. For the past six months, he'd virtually removed himself from her life, as much as one could with someone they saw every day, and sometimes partnered with. Which was to say that it had been excruciatingly awkward between them, every interaction flavored with forbidden knowledge, and the tension of suppressed emotion.

_Not 'repressed'. It's not like it's not been uncovered. It's not like we don't know any more. It's that we do know, and pretend that we don't, because we don't know what to do with it._

Which was what he'd said to her, as she lay in her hospital bed. He hadn't known what to do with it. Hadn't known if he should simply accept it, and move on, or if he should revisit the dreams he'd once had. Hadn't known how to let it lie between them without expression.

_Not that I'm much good at expressing myself. Not to someone I care about. I even verified with the doctor that she wouldn't be able to hear my words, before I could muster the courage to say them. _

The thought brought a flood of memory, as he recalled another regrettable time he'd been unable to find his voice. He'd fallen in love with only two women in his life, and he'd not been able to say it to either of them.

_What is wrong with me? They're just three simple words. Why can't I say them?_

He'd beaten himself up about it, with Maeve. Confessed to Morgan that he hadn't reciprocated when she'd said it to him. Promised himself that he would say it to her, endlessly, if only….please God, if only….he could be given the chance. And then Fate, and a mentally ill woman named Diane, had conspired against him, and made him say precisely the opposite.

"_I don't love you_," he'd said. But Maeve had heard what he hadn't said. She'd known. Her eyes had told him that.

JJ hadn't heard any of it. Not what he'd said, nor what he hadn't. She hadn't heard him pleading for her to come back to him, hadn't heard his regret at how he'd handled things. Hadn't looked into his eyes, to see the truth.

_I couldn't even bring myself to stay in the room with her, after, when she was awake. I couldn't say anything but "You're my best friend….gotta go." How ridiculous is that?!_

Sometimes he wondered if it meant he was incapable of love. Of real love. The kind you can actually declare to the person you love.

_Is that why I can't say it? Because it's not real? Do I just feel obligated, because it's been said to me? Am I just being polite?_

Instinctively, he knew that not to be true, because he'd expressed it a thousand times within the confines of his mind. He'd loved Maeve. He'd told himself that, over and over again. He'd even told it to Morgan.

_But not to her. Never to her. _

And he'd never said it to JJ. She'd told him twice, now, and at great cost, both times. But he had yet to reciprocate.

_Is it because I don't actually love her? Have I buried my feelings so deeply that I can't even find them anymore? _

Instinctively, he knew that wasn't true. He knew his feelings were still there. His love for JJ might not have resembled the infatuation of his twenty-four-year old self, but it was there. It might not have held the promises and possibilities that it once had, but it was still there. It was deep, and warm, and for the past six months, it had been fighting to rise to the surface.

_To what end? To have a life together? That can't happen, and we both know it. So, why?_

He'd told his mother. God help him, he'd told his mother.

_Probably because I knew she would forget it. Is that the only time I can tell the truth? When I know it will be buried again, soon enough?_

It had come as a total surprise to him, this unexpected sharing with Diana. When he'd been summoned to her facility, he'd been prepared for the worst, and met with the best, even if it was only as a prelude to the end. After a steady decline, Diana had suddenly become the most coherent and articulate, the most 'normal' that she'd been in years. She'd recognized him immediately, been able to hold a full conversation, her memories of both the near and distant pasts fully functional. She'd even lost that near-constant sneer that her schizophrenia had etched so deeply into her facies.

He'd never even considered it possible, not with her dual diagnoses. And so, it had seemingly come of nowhere, a miracle bestowed for no discernible reason into the life of an unbeliever, on what had earlier promised to become one of the worst days of his life.

_What do I do with that? _

The same thing he'd said to himself about JJ's declaration of love.

_Have I become so accustomed to being the whipping boy of the universe, that I don't know what to do when something goes right?_

Without realizing it, he'd begun to think of himself that way, as someone destined not to have good things in his life. Someone who simply watches when those good things happen to others. He'd watched Morgan find love, and Emily, and Luke, and Garcia. He'd watched Hotch find it for a second time, and Rossi a third. And, most poignantly, he'd watched JJ find it.

_I did find it once, though. And I guess technically it's 'twice' now. But I'm still alone. _

Sometimes painfully so, and never more achingly than on the day he'd had to walk away from a still-living, still-breathing woman who loved him back.

Falling to his well-worn sofa, Reid's eyes stared out into the middle distance as his mind continued to replay his visit with Diana.

The preceding day had been such an ordeal, from the moment he'd realized something had happened to JJ, through the excruciating experience of waiting, and then confessing, and then being confessed to….it had all thrown him completely off kilter emotionally. And then to find his mother with a miraculously clear sensorium….he'd lost all of his filters, and simply unloaded on her.

He'd still been so shaken by his experience with JJ that he'd told Diana everything. How frightened he'd been for her life. How a nurse had gently pointed out to him that he was covered in her blood. Luke's kindness in bringing him his 'go bag', and offering to stay with him. The awkwardness of calling Will, and being with the man he'd so studiously avoided for the past six months.

_Was I afraid he would see it, for all that time? I couldn't say it, but was I afraid he could see it in me? Why? It's not like I ever really entertained the idea. _

But he _had_ entertained it, if only in the form of a fantasy, and never really as a hope. His mother had read into it, thinking he was waiting on JJ, just as she had waited on William. But Reid knew better, and had known, even before JJ had spelled it out for him. He hadn't needed her to. He knew who he was, and he knew who she was, and neither of them were people capable of inflicting hurt on someone else to appease their own personal desires. There had never even been a question of it.

_She wouldn't have been the woman I love, and I wouldn't have been the man that she loves. _

Which thought prompted a memory of the look on his mother's face, and the brightness in her eyes, when he'd started in on the story.

_"JJ told me that she loves me. And I love her." _

And, in spite of everything, it brought a wistful smile to Reid's face. While Diana had been in the most functional state of awareness that he could remember, he'd been able to share with her that he was loved by someone, whom he loved in return. No matter the futility of it, he'd been able to show his mother that he was capable of finding love, that she had raised him for it, that he would still know it, when she was no longer there to love him herself.

_Maybe it wasn't so random, after all. Even if none of it is meant to last...not with Mom, and not with JJ...maybe it all came together at the right time, just to bring Mom a sense of peace, at the end of a life of pain. Maybe there are small graces to be found in everything. Tender mercies._

Being able to find some meaning in it made him feel less like a playing piece being batted around in the random game of life, and a bit more like an active player. But it did nothing to ease his exhaustion. Sliding into the familiar formation of cushions on his couch, Reid gave in to it, and closed his eyes.

Maybe it would all be relegated to memory, one day, the sweetness of knowing, and the pain of letting go. Maybe it would loom less large from the perspective of time, and distance. Finding a bit of purpose in it made him look at things a little differently. Maybe he would find more. Maybe, one day, it would all prove to have been a launching point for the rest of his life.

Maybe there was something else out there for him. Maybe someone.


End file.
